Hannah had avoided Tanner the entire week. He’d called and left messages on her answering machine- the last one asked whether he’d done something to offend her-but she’d ignored him. She was looking forward to Monday and the opportunity to confront Tanner. She might not like what he had to say, but at least she’d have some answers.
She stood and walked into the bedroom, removing her red Windbreaker along the way. She dropped it, along with her purse, onto the bed.
The strap went around her neck before she could step away from the bed. Hannah felt herself being pulled back and upward. Her feet left the floor. Her hands went immediately to her throat. Something was choking her. She couldn’t breathe. What was it? Who was it?
Whoever it was, he was powerful, far more powerful than she. Hannah could feel the hair of his beard against her face as he pulled her tightly against him. She could smell the musty odor of his breath, feel the air rushing from his nostrils into her right ear. But she couldn’t get free. She kicked and wriggled and squirmed, trying her best to break his hold, but he slammed her face- first into the floor and pinned her there. She felt something warm trickle from her mouth. Blood, I must be bleeding.
When Hannah accepted the inevitability of her own death, she relaxed. She saw her mother’s smiling face, the expanse of Lake Michigan from a sandy bluff, the majesty of the purple Smoky Mountains. Lottie called to her from the kitchen. Supper was ready. Luke jerked in his bed, his eyes alight, a sure sign that he understood the joke she’d made. Aunt Mary patted her hand on the front porch swing on a moonlit summer night.
As the darkness overtook her and the white light appeared, Hannah found herself a bit surprised, even puzzled, by her lack of fear. The thought passed through her mind that perhaps she should thank this man who was taking her life. True, he was taking her unborn child along with her, but since she’d learned of the pregnancy, Hannah had caught herself-more than once-regarding the thought of a child as another tragedy in the making.
Hannah’s heart stopped beating, and the light grew brighter.
The last emotion she felt was relief.
40
The biker who killed Hannah Mills raised a beer can toward the sky.
“To gettin’ ’er done,” he yelled. Cyrus “Red” Mc-Kinney was in a celebratory mood. “The job” had gone off without a hitch. The girl had been missing for two weeks, and the cops didn’t have a clue. He was certain they would never find her.
Sitting across the table from Red was his cousin, Ricky “Barrel” Reed. Barrel had been the only person Red trusted enough to help him with the job. Red knew what they were doing was strictly forbidden by the gang’s code, but he also knew Barrel would keep quiet about it. He’d cut him in for five thousand of the twenty thousand he’d collected from the Mexican. Barrel had wanted an equal share, but because Red had done the actual wet work, he figured he earned the extra money.
It was Saturday, the last night of Bike Week in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The news had quickly spread through the ranks of Satan’s Soldiers that the officers had negotiated a fat deal with a gang in Charlotte, and the booze and drugs were flowing. They were hanging out at a bar called Dante’s, a run-down hellhole in Garden City that they took over for a week in the spring each year. Rock music was blaring, bitches were dancing topless on the tables, and two dudes had already ridden their choppers through the place. Red had downed nearly a case of beer during the day and had made two trips to the bathroom in the past hour to snort crystal meth. He was feeling like a conqueror.
“Me and you are two badass motherfuckers,” Red hollered.
“Fuckin-A!” Barrel replied.
“That bitch was just the beginning! We’re gonna be the next Murder Incorporated. Hit men, by God! I always wanted to be a hit man. Fuck this Mickey Mouse shit we been doing! We’re going big-time, baby!”
“Keep your voice down, Red! People can hear you.”
“I don’t give a shit!”
Red rose from his chair and raised both fists into the air.
“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil,” he yelled, “for I’m the baddest motherfucker in the valley!”
It took less than a week for word to reach the officers. Inquiries had been made, meetings held. And now Red found himself in a barn in Unicoi County, tied securely to a metal chair, surrounded by men he thought were his friends. Barrel was next to him, whimpering like a child.
Red watched the man circling him. He was known as Bear, the president of Satan’s Soldiers. He was six feet tall and thick as an Angus bull. Muscles rippled beneath the tight black tank top he was wearing. Everything on him was covered with thick black hair-his head, face, shoulders, back, and chest-and he was wearing the gang’s signature black bandanna. The rest of the officers were leaning against a stall about ten feet away, watching as he toyed with a length of braided rawhide and the knot at its end. They were known as Turtle, Rain Man, and Mountain.
“Know why you’re here?” Bear asked.
“We ain’t done nothing,” Red said.
The knotted piece of rawhide smashed into his temple. Red saw a bright flash as pain shot through his head and down his spine.
“Don’t lie to me, Red. It’ll go a lot easier on you. That girl you killed worked for the DA. You think they’re gonna stop looking for her, you damned fool? Now we gotta clean up the mess you made.”
“Ain’t no mess,” Red said. “Ain’t nobody gonna find nothing.”
“We got rules. You break the rules, it affects us all. What the hell were you thinking? Going on your own. And a girl! She hadn’t done a damned thing to us. And now, all this heat.”
“There won’t be no heat. They ain’t gonna find nothing.”
“Won’t be no heat? How do you think we found out about it? Because you’re too goddamned dumb to keep your mouth shut. You and this fat lump of shit next to you.”
“We won’t say nothing, Bear,” Barrel cried. “I swear to God we won’t say a word.”
Red heard the whiz of the rawhide and the dull thump as it struck his cousin. Barrel screamed.
“Shut your mouth, lard ass!” Bear yelled. “Now, I’ve known the two of you long enough to know that ol’ Barrel here doesn’t have brains enough to get in out of the rain. So you must have been the one who set it up. Right, Red?”
Red nodded his head and closed his eyes. He listened as Bear’s boots crunched the dirt floor as he continued to circle.
“Who paid you?”
“Some Mexican down in Morristown.”
“What Mexican? How’d he get in touch with you?”
“Don’t know his name. I found out about the contract from another Mexican dude I party with. I told him I might be interested, so he gave me a number to call. I set up a meet and went to Morristown.”
“How much? How much did it take to get you to betray us?”
“I didn’t betray y’all, man. All I did was a job. It put fifteen grand in my pocket and didn’t cause nobody no harm. Like I said, they ain’t gonna find her.”
“What’d you do with her?”
The interrogation lasted another fifteen minutes. The more Red talked, the less hostile Bear’s voice became. Red told him everything: how they’d cased her place, how they’d killed her, where they’d put the body, what they’d done after the murder.
Bear squatted down in front of Red and put his hands on Red’s knees.
“Anything else you can think of?”
“No, man. I told you everything.”
“Good.”
